Star Tribune
Burnsville firefighter-paramedic Adam Finseth remembered as always ready to help
Those who knew Adam Finseth, the firefighter-paramedic who was shot and killed while tending to victims at a domestic violence call in Burnsville, remembered him as friendly and always ready to help others. He brimmed with a sense of purpose and confidence that made others feel good, too.
Finseth, 40, and officers Paul Elmstrand and Matthew Ruge were fatally shot Sunday after a standoff at a Burnsville home where a heavily armed man had barricaded himself with a woman and seven children. Finseth, a paramedic with the police SWAT unit, died after being shot in the torso and arm.
Matt Arnold, a friend dating back to Finseth’s elementary school days in the Rochester area, remembered Finseth as having a deep connection to many people, along with a great sense of humor and humility.
“If you were having a bad day or whatever, he’s going to be the one who will brighten it,” Arnold said.
Arnold was a lifeguard with Finseth after they both graduated from Rochester’s John Marshall Senior High School in 2001. Both men went on to attend Rochester Community and Technical College. After 9/11, Finseth was looking for his purpose in life and enlisted in the U.S. Army.
Finseth went on to serve during Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to his LinkedIn page.
“He wanted to serve,” Arnold said. “He had this purpose.”
While in the military, Finseth married his wife, Tara. Arnold remembered Finseth’s parents as being kind and welcoming to their son’s friends, treating them like family. That nurturing spirit helped shape Finseth as he became a husband and father. He had two elementary-school-age children, a boy and a girl, Arnold said.
Finseth was the friend everyone could count on, and he worked to maintain connections to friends in high school and other parts of his life. He never took himself too seriously, Arnold said.
“He was like the most selfless guy in the world,” Arnold said.
After working for the cities of Savage and Hastings, Finseth was hired in Burnsville in 2019.
To Savage Fire Chief Jeremie Bresnahan, Finseth “embodied the true spirit of a firefighter,” showing others respect, empathy and compassion, the chief wrote in an email sent to city staff and shared with the Star Tribune. Finseth worked as a paid on-call firefighter for Savage for more than six years.
“His legacy is etched in the memories of those who served alongside him and characterized by his calm demeanor and unwavering support for his fellow team members,” Bresnahan wrote. “Adam’s impact on our department and community will be remembered, and his selfless service inspires us all.”
Todd Burke was the director of the Tactical Emergency Medical Services School that Finseth attended in 2021 to train for his role with the SWAT officers.
“We noticed him from the very beginning because he always had a smile and kind word,” Burke said. “When you put an individual like that on a team, he lifts everybody up.”
Attendees of the training program — a vigorous 77-hour course held over six days at Camp Ripley in Little Falls, Minn. — are divided into four teams when they arrive, Burke said.
Finseth, who was fun and outgoing but not goofy, was chosen by his peers to lead one of the teams. He mentored less-experienced teammates, Burke said, including Burke’s own teenage daughter, who was also enrolled in the class.
“It was about helping the person next to you succeed,” Burke said. “You have to accept you’re putting yourself at risk in a life-threatening environment to save potentially savable lives.”
Fiona Burke, a first responder who trained with Finseth, described him as a “very patient, observant leader” during the program. Finseth’s role as a father likely made him more patient with team members, she said, adding that she later stayed in touch with him through social media.
A GoFundMe fundraiser for Finseth’s family had raised more than $70,000 by Wednesday morning. Organizer and friend Jordan Doring called Finseth a “beloved father and loving husband” who “cherished his family above all else and worked tirelessly to provide them with love, support, and security.”
The Law Enforcement Labor Services is coordinating a fundraiser that will deliver funds directly to the three men’s families, according to a Burnsville spokesperson.
“He was just an amazing human,” Arnold said. “He’s just a hero.”
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
